Why you have to put yourself first

It’s one thing to say you’ve gotta love yourself, friend! That’s pretty basic self improvement rhetoric.

So, let me give you my take on why you really do need need to put yourself first for once.

Here goes.

Before you make time, love, commitment or compassion for other people in the hopes that is returned to you… you need to carve out that same time, love, commitment, and compassion for yourself.

Yes! That is the vibe!

• You have to please yourself before you please them.
• You have to love yourself before you love them.
• You have to commit to yourself before you commit to them.
• You have to be kind to yourself before you’re kind to them.
• You have to cheer for yourself before you cheer for them.
• You have to be your own hype man before you become theirs.

We all need to give to ourselves first what we want from others. We need to give to ourselves first what we expect to give to others and others to give us in return.

We have to!

Otherwise we’ll never really know what our truth is.

This isn’t some narcissistic, selfish practice. No!

I think it’s great that you want to love someone. I think it’s great that you want to support and root for someone else. I think it’s great that you then want that person to love you and support you and root for you.

But unless you know what that looks like to yourself first, you’re going to struggle with living that truth. Unless you know what it means to love yourself, support yourself and root for yourself… it’s going to be tough. It’s a major power move to put yourself first and once you spend some time doing it, learning it and practicing it… you’ll notice that you change.

You can call it self love or whatever you want it but here’s what it looks like:

• Instead of struggling and hustling to please someone or a company, you give yourself a break and some rest.
• Instead of putting in another 18 hour day, you say I need a break. Instead of saying yes to what your friend group wants to do and just going along with it, you say no thanks.
• Instead of being hard on yourself again, you ease off.
• Instead of giving up on an idea or dream or hobby, you double down on it.

Love yourself, support yourself and hype yourself up so that you can do that to others and so that they can do the same to you.

It’s a 3 step process. … and you can’t start in the middle like a lot of us tend to do. We tend to think that if we just love someone harder, if we just work for that company hard, if we just hustle harder, support harder, commit harder, that will then come back to us.

We think that person will do the same to us, that company will do the same to us and through that process we will feel the same way to ourselves.

We assume that life looks a little something like: You love them, they love you, you love you. You support them, they support you, you support you.

1, 2, 3.

But I’ve learned it just doesn't work like that! You can’t start in the middle of that equation and hope to come out the other side with what you want and deserve. It doesn’t work like that.

You have to start with YOU.

You love you, you love them and they love you.

You support you, you support them, they support you.

That is it!

It really is a life changing thing to reverse that order.

That means making yourself smile instead of making them smile for once. It means cheering for yourself before cheering for them.

Reverse! It’s not permanent.

It’s a simple reset to really understand what you’re doing. It’s the ultimate power move to take a pause, hit reverse and focus on putting yourself first.

• Fix your own problems instead of someone else's.
• Figure out what makes you happy instead of them first.
• Hype yourself up and make yourself confident instead of them.
• Give yourself dating advice instead of them.

That's the vibe. If you want to love, support and cheer for someone else in a meaningful way in life, you first have to learn to do those things to yourself.